Parents try to unadopt troubled boy
SuzannePjam
Posts: 411
Since the article is long I've only posted some of it. Click on the link to read the full story. It's interesting and sad.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15188209/
Parents try to unadopt troubled boy
Mother says caseworkers failed to disclose child's stormy history
By Brigid Schulte
Updated: 1 hour, 20 minutes ago
A talkative 9-year-old boy came to Helen Briggs on Valentine's Day 2000. She was a foster mother with years of tough love and scores of troubled kids behind her. But she grew to love this boy. Within the year, she'd talked her husband into adopting him.
Now, six years later, Briggs and her husband, James, a maintenance worker for the city of Alexandria, are taking the highly unusual step of trying to unadopt him.
In 2003, when the boy was 12, he sexually molested a 6-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl still in diapers. She said it was only then, as she waited outside the courtroom for his sexual battery hearing and caseworkers handed her his psychological profile, that she found out just how damaged the boy had been when he came into her life.
The Washington Post generally does not name the subjects of juvenile court cases.
Briggs said she did not know he had lived in five foster homes since he was 16 months old. Nor that his alcohol- and drug-addicted biological parents had physically abused him, injuring his brain stem and impairing his ability to gauge the passage of time.
He'd been hospitalized seven times in psychiatric institutions and diagnosed as possibly psychotically bipolar. He'd thrown knives, kicked in walls, pulled out all his hair and threatened to kill himself. He'd heard voices telling him to do bad things. His confidential case file shows he most likely was sexually abused.
"I did not know any of that," Briggs said, though Virginia policy states that caseworkers should provide "full, factual information" about a child to adoptive parents. "They just told me he was hyperactive."
She said the state's failure to fully disclose the boy's background is tantamount to fraud.
State child welfare officials could not comment on the case because of confidentiality restrictions. But some caseworkers do not believe Briggs, records show. They think she wants to get out of paying child support.
Tough decisions
Still, a Fairfax County court has granted Briggs's petition to relinquish custody. The boy, who has lived in institutions since his conviction, is now officially back in foster care. He asked to be put on suicide watch, records show, when the judge's decision came down.
Briggs hired an attorney to terminate her parental rights. But in Virginia, a child older than 14 must give consent. The boy, now nearing 16, wants Briggs to be his mother forever, according to the voluminous confidential case file and e-mail and phone records Briggs subpoenaed for her lawsuit and provided to The Post.
Briggs sought to file a "wrongful adoption" lawsuit. But under Virginia law, she needed to file within two years of discovering the boy's history. Instead, she wavered.
First, she wanted him home after he had completed his sex offender treatment. But then psychologists deemed him a "sexual predator." That meant Briggs could no longer be a foster parent, which she considers her job. Nor could she allow her three grandchildren in her house. Nor could she keep a little girl she had cared for since the day she was born.
She had to choose.
"You don't want to throw somebody away," she said. "But sometimes you have to."
Her choice has left her with none of the rights and many of the responsibilities of a parent. Caseworkers forbid her from contacting the child because he becomes so violent and angry when she does. Yet state law requires that she pay $427 a month in child support and cover court costs when he appears before judges who now decide what's best for him.
With no legal recourse, she is asking politicians to help her find a way out.
"At first blush, you think, 'What, you're trying to give up your kid? You're a jerk,' " said Virginia Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax). "Then you find this lady has received awards for all the foster work she's done. And that she never would have adopted the boy and put other children in danger if she had had the information that was withheld from her."
The technical term for what Briggs is trying to do is "dissolve" the adoption, as if all the bonds of love and hurt could simply vanish into thin air.
Hopeful start
When Briggs, 57, went to visit the boy for the first time, she said she saw a cute, happy child. She recalls caseworkers telling her that he was in a psychiatric hospital because he was too much of a handful for his great-aunt.
They were nearing desperation before they found Briggs, records show. Nobody wanted him.
A no-nonsense, old-school "professional parent," Briggs figured she could handle him. When the boy acted out, she gave him limits. When he began pulling his hair out, she had it shaved. And when he kept running away from school and her Lorton townhouse, she turned him over to her husband for a whupping, just like she got as a child -- until caseworkers called Child Protective Services.
Nonetheless, caseworkers noted that the boy thrived in her care. "The Briggs foster home is the most constructive and potentially successful placement option that this child has," they wrote.
Briggs hadn't planned on adopting anyone. There was just something special about this child. He was so thankful he had his own room, with the first bed he hadn't had to share in his whole life, she remembers him telling her.
If she got sick, he'd make her soup and rub her feet. At school, if he heard an ambulance, he'd be beside himself until school workers let him call home to make sure Briggs was okay. She understood, she said. So many people had abandoned the child.
As she was signing the adoption papers, she remembers nothing about a background briefing, as required by state policy. Only a caseworker asking skeptically, "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Yes," she recalled answering. "I love him."
When the boy came to her, he was taking medications for mental illness, depression, delusions, seizures and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He was considered a "therapeutic" foster child, one that comes with extra emotional, medical or behavioral baggage and a heftier monthly subsidy.
Some case workers think she must have known, records show. One wrote that Briggs wasn't being "entirely honest." However, nothing in the case file indicates she was given an oral briefing or a written summary of the boy's background, or access to his records. In some reports, details such as his psychiatric hospitalizations and sexual abuse are left out.
There are also notations of alarm when Briggs began taking the child off his medications, that perhaps she did not understand the gravity of his condition.
Briggs said she thought the medications were for hyperactivity. When the child began complaining of headaches, she took him to a psychiatrist caseworkers recommended. She asked if the boy needed all the pills. The psychiatrist, records show, said no.
"When he told me he was hearing voices, I told him it was just his conscience talking," she said.
'I can't take him back'
Records show that caseworkers are vehemently against Briggs terminating her parental rights. "At least, if his parents win the lottery and die, he will inherit," one wrote in an e-mail. Some think she has rejected the boy because she needs the money she gets from foster children.
"That's a lie," Briggs said angrily.
A religious woman and active in her Sword of Spirit Deliverance Ministry Pentecostal Church, Briggs said being a foster mother is a calling. She's on disability, she explained, so it's one of the few things she can do to supplement her husband's blue-collar wage.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15188209/
Parents try to unadopt troubled boy
Mother says caseworkers failed to disclose child's stormy history
By Brigid Schulte
Updated: 1 hour, 20 minutes ago
A talkative 9-year-old boy came to Helen Briggs on Valentine's Day 2000. She was a foster mother with years of tough love and scores of troubled kids behind her. But she grew to love this boy. Within the year, she'd talked her husband into adopting him.
Now, six years later, Briggs and her husband, James, a maintenance worker for the city of Alexandria, are taking the highly unusual step of trying to unadopt him.
In 2003, when the boy was 12, he sexually molested a 6-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl still in diapers. She said it was only then, as she waited outside the courtroom for his sexual battery hearing and caseworkers handed her his psychological profile, that she found out just how damaged the boy had been when he came into her life.
The Washington Post generally does not name the subjects of juvenile court cases.
Briggs said she did not know he had lived in five foster homes since he was 16 months old. Nor that his alcohol- and drug-addicted biological parents had physically abused him, injuring his brain stem and impairing his ability to gauge the passage of time.
He'd been hospitalized seven times in psychiatric institutions and diagnosed as possibly psychotically bipolar. He'd thrown knives, kicked in walls, pulled out all his hair and threatened to kill himself. He'd heard voices telling him to do bad things. His confidential case file shows he most likely was sexually abused.
"I did not know any of that," Briggs said, though Virginia policy states that caseworkers should provide "full, factual information" about a child to adoptive parents. "They just told me he was hyperactive."
She said the state's failure to fully disclose the boy's background is tantamount to fraud.
State child welfare officials could not comment on the case because of confidentiality restrictions. But some caseworkers do not believe Briggs, records show. They think she wants to get out of paying child support.
Tough decisions
Still, a Fairfax County court has granted Briggs's petition to relinquish custody. The boy, who has lived in institutions since his conviction, is now officially back in foster care. He asked to be put on suicide watch, records show, when the judge's decision came down.
Briggs hired an attorney to terminate her parental rights. But in Virginia, a child older than 14 must give consent. The boy, now nearing 16, wants Briggs to be his mother forever, according to the voluminous confidential case file and e-mail and phone records Briggs subpoenaed for her lawsuit and provided to The Post.
Briggs sought to file a "wrongful adoption" lawsuit. But under Virginia law, she needed to file within two years of discovering the boy's history. Instead, she wavered.
First, she wanted him home after he had completed his sex offender treatment. But then psychologists deemed him a "sexual predator." That meant Briggs could no longer be a foster parent, which she considers her job. Nor could she allow her three grandchildren in her house. Nor could she keep a little girl she had cared for since the day she was born.
She had to choose.
"You don't want to throw somebody away," she said. "But sometimes you have to."
Her choice has left her with none of the rights and many of the responsibilities of a parent. Caseworkers forbid her from contacting the child because he becomes so violent and angry when she does. Yet state law requires that she pay $427 a month in child support and cover court costs when he appears before judges who now decide what's best for him.
With no legal recourse, she is asking politicians to help her find a way out.
"At first blush, you think, 'What, you're trying to give up your kid? You're a jerk,' " said Virginia Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax). "Then you find this lady has received awards for all the foster work she's done. And that she never would have adopted the boy and put other children in danger if she had had the information that was withheld from her."
The technical term for what Briggs is trying to do is "dissolve" the adoption, as if all the bonds of love and hurt could simply vanish into thin air.
Hopeful start
When Briggs, 57, went to visit the boy for the first time, she said she saw a cute, happy child. She recalls caseworkers telling her that he was in a psychiatric hospital because he was too much of a handful for his great-aunt.
They were nearing desperation before they found Briggs, records show. Nobody wanted him.
A no-nonsense, old-school "professional parent," Briggs figured she could handle him. When the boy acted out, she gave him limits. When he began pulling his hair out, she had it shaved. And when he kept running away from school and her Lorton townhouse, she turned him over to her husband for a whupping, just like she got as a child -- until caseworkers called Child Protective Services.
Nonetheless, caseworkers noted that the boy thrived in her care. "The Briggs foster home is the most constructive and potentially successful placement option that this child has," they wrote.
Briggs hadn't planned on adopting anyone. There was just something special about this child. He was so thankful he had his own room, with the first bed he hadn't had to share in his whole life, she remembers him telling her.
If she got sick, he'd make her soup and rub her feet. At school, if he heard an ambulance, he'd be beside himself until school workers let him call home to make sure Briggs was okay. She understood, she said. So many people had abandoned the child.
As she was signing the adoption papers, she remembers nothing about a background briefing, as required by state policy. Only a caseworker asking skeptically, "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Yes," she recalled answering. "I love him."
When the boy came to her, he was taking medications for mental illness, depression, delusions, seizures and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He was considered a "therapeutic" foster child, one that comes with extra emotional, medical or behavioral baggage and a heftier monthly subsidy.
Some case workers think she must have known, records show. One wrote that Briggs wasn't being "entirely honest." However, nothing in the case file indicates she was given an oral briefing or a written summary of the boy's background, or access to his records. In some reports, details such as his psychiatric hospitalizations and sexual abuse are left out.
There are also notations of alarm when Briggs began taking the child off his medications, that perhaps she did not understand the gravity of his condition.
Briggs said she thought the medications were for hyperactivity. When the child began complaining of headaches, she took him to a psychiatrist caseworkers recommended. She asked if the boy needed all the pills. The psychiatrist, records show, said no.
"When he told me he was hearing voices, I told him it was just his conscience talking," she said.
'I can't take him back'
Records show that caseworkers are vehemently against Briggs terminating her parental rights. "At least, if his parents win the lottery and die, he will inherit," one wrote in an e-mail. Some think she has rejected the boy because she needs the money she gets from foster children.
"That's a lie," Briggs said angrily.
A religious woman and active in her Sword of Spirit Deliverance Ministry Pentecostal Church, Briggs said being a foster mother is a calling. She's on disability, she explained, so it's one of the few things she can do to supplement her husband's blue-collar wage.
"Where there is sacrifice there is someone collecting the sacrificial offerings."-- Ayn Rand
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello
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Comments
I think that it was pretty obvious what she was getting herself into when the kid was already taking medications for mental illness, depression, delusions, seizures and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Brings up a good debate topic though: What should done with disturbed/abused kids who are both a danger to themselves and society at large? No it's not his fault that he had addict parents but honestly- this kid will most likely be the next school shooter.
This is sad all around. If someone can step in and get this kid the help he needs early on, then he may not end up the next school shooter (last I checked the there has never been any school shooter linked to a kind of life like this kid has, so its not really fair to suggest that). I think above all else though is figuring out what is wrong with society that our kids end up in this postion in the first place!! Lets face it, the really scary thing here is that kinds you'd least expect end up bringing guns to school. This isn't a race, inner city vs suburbs, or any other kind debate that you can label. Its a problem with society as a whole.
I work with kids, it always breaks my heart to hear about children that are failed by all of the adults in their lives like this.
Makes you wonder how people sleep at night.
Also...
I feel sorry for this kid, but it seems as though the state dumped him on her without giving her enough information to know what she was really getting into.
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825